If You Have Ever...

    Have you ever portioned pieces of grape with your fingernails?  Have you ever made someone so happy they pant and roar with delight in a tiny little voice?  Have you ever been so tired you could not drag yourself out of bed one more time, and then do it anyway, over and over again?  Have you ever read two books with less than ten pages over and over in the back of a car?  Have you ever had someone fall into complete peace and rest against you, pressing comically chubby cheeks against wherever they rest?  Have you ever eaten pureed food that you just wiped off someone else's face?  Have you ever watched a tiny human being play telephone on a pulse-oximeter? Have you ever watched an unspeakably beautiful person go about their little life, tottering about so busily and been unable to grasp the whole glory of being, in part, the source of such a miraculous thing?

    Have you ever been called to a duty so necessary, so terrifying, and found you could only rise to it because the need poured out from someone you loved, not for what they gave you, but at times even for the need itself?  Have you looked in awe at the beauty of the dependance one small baby lavishes on you, and held them close wanting nothing, nothing better than their safety and peace and happiness, that their unthinking trust in you is rewarded with love?

                                                       

    Have you ever been the bearer of a miracle of life and found yourself humbled rather than puffed up to pride to find that you could be a mother to a living child?  To realize that human bodies can conceive a child, but how the joining of mother and father create life is a mystery?  That you, who are in so many ways responsible, could never have planned or fashioned what you were given.  That you grew and nurtured though the nature you were fashioned with in your own mother's womb, but can only give credit for the magic of life to the one to whom it is due.